Sculpted Prims II

abstract:The tutorial shows in easy steps, how to sharpen the edges of your model
and how to create a very simple texture by using multiple materials. We assume,
that you have basic knowledge about the blender user interface. But we still provide
enough background information, so that even blender newbies can follow the process.
The tutorial works for blender 2.49b and Jass-2

Hello and welcome again! We will now proceed with our top-hat and optimize its shape. Then we are going to try an easy way to texturise it. We will create a simple black surface, and add a colored band to it. But let us begin by examining what we already have by now. We see that the top-edge of the hat is not well defined, so we want to sharpen it a bit. The same is true for the edge between the brim and the body. We can do this by using the Crease-function.

To understand how crease works, let us Look at this simple plane for a moment. I will select the left-half of it and rotate it along the x-axis. As you can see, the plane gets bended in a smooth way and the surface moves-away from the control points. So we can immediately see, that the control-points are not always located right on the surface of the object. Right now their influence on the surface is weak to keep the surface very smooth and organic.

With the crease-function we can change the amount of this influence and thus we can create sharper edges. It is important to know that crease only works on edges, and never on single vertices. So you need to select at least one edge, before you can apply crease. Let us select one single edge, and then enable Crease.

You find Crease under:

mesh -> edges -> crease-subsurf

As a short-cut you also can press SHIFT-“e”, to enable it. A dashed-line appears. You can enlarge or shorten this line by moving the mouse. The longer the line is, the stronger the edges pull on the surface until it touches the edges. You can select any set of edges and adjust the crease value for each edge differently. You can of course select many edges at once, and set their crease-value in one single operation.

Turning back to our hat we will want to apply the Crease-option along the top-edge and along the lower edge between the brim and the hat-body. So let us try that out-now.

go to edit-mode.

Then select the top edge-loop: Press the alt-key then right-click on an arbitrary edge of the loop.

After the edge-loop is selected, press SHIFT-“E” and then enlarge the appearing handle until the edge looks clean-cut.

After you have adjusted the top of the hat, we can proceed with the brim. Again select the appropriate edge-loop. Then invoke the crease function, and sharpen the edge exactly as you did before.

At the end let us compress the hat along-one-axis to give it a more vivid touch.

The basic model is completed by now. So let us give a first try on texturizing. Well, this is a very complex topic. But we will choose a simple approach here and proceed in small steps only.

With blender you will first need to learn how to work with materials. Which in first place means, you must know how to create materials and how to assign them to your objects. So please always remember, that Working with materials
is the key to create textures for your models in blender.

And Here we go:

Select your object and ensure that you have selected draw-type “solid”, or draw-type “shaded”. Then you can immediately see the effects of your material settings.

Now go to the shading-panel. You can do this by pressing F5.

In the Links-and-pipeline tab, find the label: “Link to Object”.

There click on add-new, to create and automatically assign a new material to your model.

As soon as your first material is created, a multitude of new buttons appears. But you can ignore most of these buttons for now. We will get back to them later. Right now your material has been automatically named material. Since this is not very meaningfull, please rename the material to something more recognizable, like “hat-base” for example. That will save you a lot of time when you want to look-up your material again later.

Now we will modify the material to serve our purpose:

In the material tab click on the color-selector and use the upcoming color-picker window to turn the color from light grey to very dark grey. Just click on an appropriate area in the color-picker, then move the mouse out of the color-picker without any further clicking. Note that you should see a dark-grey sphere in the preview window. And also your object should have turned very dark.

By now the entire object has been assigned to the-same material. Let us now take care about the hat-band, and let us make it red.

For this purpose we will first create a secnd material. Look-up again the label: “link to object” then click on the up-and-down arrow keys and Add a new material.

Rename this material to: hat-band.

Then change the material-color to a light red.

By now we have created 2 separate materials. You can switch the material for the entire object by simply selecting the appropriate material here. Right now the hat-band material is also applied to the whole object when it is selected. But we want to apply it only to a few faces, and keep the majority of faces assigned to the base material. So how can we make this assignment ?

ok, this is done as follows:

let us select the base material again, to make the entire object black.

Then go to edit mode, And also go to the edit-buttons-panel. You can use F9 for this.

Under link and materials, find the material button. Right below the material button you should now see the text:”1 Mat 1″.This means, that exactly one material is assigned to the object and this material has the material-index 1.

Select a row of faces on the hat. Move the faces along z, until they are located where you want the band to appear later.

In the material selector select “hat-band”. The selected faces now should become red. And the before mentioned text should have changed to:”2 Mat 2″This consequently means: We now have 2 materials assigned to the object and the secnd material with material-index 2 is currently assigned to the selected vertices.

The model has now been assigned to 2 different materials. One material for the hat itself using a dark-grey color. The other material used for the band using a light red color. In edit-mode we have selected a subset of faces for the band, and assigned the hat-band material to these faces.

Now we are almost ready to make our first texture out of this model. In fact we could bake the texture right-now, but We will make another preparation for convenience. So please go to object mode now. Ensure that you do this, because otherwise you will end up with a wrong UV-map. ok. So we are in object-mode now ? Your hat might look very dark at this moment. Ignore that for now.

Open the editing buttons-screen by clicking on F9. Then locate the Mesh tab.

By now you have created a copy of the sculptie map. You will use this copy for your texturing purposes. The good thing about this approach is, that you never mess up your sculptmap with your texture. You can switch between your sculptmap and your texture by selecting the appropriate active UV-texture.

Please go back to edit mode now.

There select all vertices. If you don’t select all vertices here you will not be able to proceed with the next step.

Go to the UV-editor, and there create a new image of size 64 times 64. Just click on: image, new. Then enter width and height. Please use 64 times 64 for now, even if you think that this is a very low resolution texture. We will come back to this issue in the next tutorial of this series.

Please rename the just created image to : “texture”, so that it later becomes easier to locate it in the list of images.

And now finally we can bake the texture as follows: Click on

Render -> Bake render meshes -> texture-only.

You will end up with a mostly black image containing a red horizontal stripe. This is your very first and very primitive texture for your sculptie. Save this texture to your hard disk and examine how it appears on your object in OpenSim or any compatible online world. After you have uploaded the surface-texture, just drag it onto your sculptie. It should correctly wrap around the object.
If you think that something is wrong, then please

check in the texture tab that you have enabled default-mapping.

Also look at the repeats per face. Ensure that their values are set to 1 in U and in V.

And check, that the offsets have been set to 0.

You should also set the color of your sculptie to white. Otherwise you will get a mixture between the SL color settings and your texture.

Please also check that full-bright is disabled for now.

Now take a closer look at the sculptie. You can see that indeed the red band is now visible. But it does not appear where we placed it in blender. Also the sharpened edges at the top and at the brim are not visible.

Please remember, that we have changed the model when we applied the crease-function and we also moved the vertices for the band along the z-axis. Hence We have to re-bake the sculpt-map of the current model. Take care to select the sculptie texture, before you bake the sculptmap. Otherwise you will overwrite the previously created surface-texture of your sculptie. And now finally, the band appears at the correct location.

We are now at the end of the secnd sculptie tutorial. I have shown you

how you can use the Crease-function to make sharp edges.

After we have finished the basic model

i have given you a very light-weighted introduction into blender’s material system

and how you can use it to create textures based on multiple materials.

In the next tutorial We will proceed by introducing some more fancy texturing techniques including shadow-maps and procedural textures. Until then, stay tuned and have fun.